THE IMPACT OF EUGENICS ON SPECIAL EDUCATION IN 1930s SAN FRANCISCO Margot W. Smith, Dr.P.H. February, 2008 1 THE IMPACT OF EUGENICS ON SPECIAL EDUCATION IN 1930s SAN FRANCISCO Margot W. Smith, Dr.P.H. Abstract In the 1930s, about 2% of San Francisco’s children were diagnosed as intellectually disabled and placed in special education or institutionalized. Most of the children were of Italian descent. Teachers, physicians, psychologists and social workers authorized their placement in San Francisco’s special education classes, specified the training that the children were to receive, and on occasion, referred children to Sonoma State Hospital for institutionalization. As professionals, they followed State mandates for compulsory education and were influenced by the prevailing philosophies of the time -- eugenics and social Darwinism. Pupils who fell behind in school were sent to a psychologist for individual testing; the child’s 1916 Simon-Binet IQ test score was an important part of the diagnosis. The school psychologist, Olga Bridgeman and the head of special education, Louise Lombard had been trained to use the IQ test by Henry Goddard of Vineland School. The Sonoma State Hospital was headed by Fred Butler who took great pride in his sterilization program. A question asked in 1964 was where did they all go as adults? They were no longer considered intellectually disabled. A follow up study in 1984 partially answers that question. 2 THE IMPACT OF EUGENICS ON SPECIAL EDUCATION IN 1930s SAN FRANCISCO Margot W. Smith, Dr.P.H. In 1964, the White House Conference on Mental Retardation noted that far fewer people over the age of twenty were identified as "mentally retarded" than there were in the 1930s; its report called them the “disappearing retardate.” (U.S. Dept. of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1964) How did this happen? In San Francisco, these disappearing retarded adults were children in the public schools of the 1930s. How they as children were diagnosed and educated in their special education classes may provide some insight into their disappearance. In the 1930s, about 2% of San Francisco’s children were diagnosed as intellectually disabled and placed in special education or institutionalized. Teachers, physicians, psychologists and social workers authorized the placement of children in San Francisco’s special education classes, specified the training that the children were to receive, and on occasion, referred children to Sonoma State Hospital for institutionalization. As professionals, they followed State mandates for compulsory education and were influenced by the prevailing philosophies of the time -- eugenics and social Darwinism,. Prior to the 1937 intelligence test revision by Terman and Merrill, 1916 Simon-Binet IQ test scores were an important part of the diagnosis. Pupils who fell behind in school were sent to a psychologist for individual testing. However, from the beginning of intelligence testing, professionals were faced with the problem of stigma. The terms used by Henry Goddard and Lewis Terman were idiot, those with IQ of below 24, imbecile, 25 through 49, moron, 50 to 69, borderline from 70 to 79, and dull, 80- 89. (Terman, 1919) When tests were used in the school setting, teachers found it difficult to tell parents that their child was an imbecile or to obtain parents’ consent to place a child in a class for morons. From the l870's on, euphemisms were developed to soften the diagnosis. These were, in rough chronological order, dullards, laggards, pupils of poor scholarship, the motor-minded, more suitable for manual training, not book-minded, hand-minded, motor types, feebleminded, backward, abnormal, subnormal, atypical, mentally defective, mentally deficient, oligophrenics, opportunity pupils, ungraded pupils, special, over-age, exceptional, mentally handicapped, mentally retarded, and now, intellectually and developmentally disabled. The American Association on Mental Retardation changed its name to the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (AAIDD) in 2007 and soon after changed the diagnosis in its scholarly journals and general usage to intellectual disability. San Francisco children in the 1930s attended a city school system that was proud of its modem methods and its provisions for children who fell above and below the norm in mental ability. Psychologists, social workers, teachers and other professionals believed that they were using the most advanced methods for diagnoses and treatment, methods conforming to the most progressive and enlightened standards of the day. I. EARLY CARE FOR THE INTELLECTUALLY DISABLED. Care for those with intellectual disability in the 1930s was founded in events of the latter half of the nineteenth century. Moral treatment developed for the humane care of the insane in the 1800s was 3 thought also applicable to the intellectually disabled. Its advocates believed that patients had a better chance of recovery if treated like a human child rather than like an animal. (Carron, 2012) In 1848, the first institution in the United States for training “feebleminded indigent youths” was established in Massachusetts at the inspiration of Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe who had visited moral training institutions in Europe. California founded its first “institution for the feebleminded” in 1883. By 1917, all but four states were making some institutional provision for those with intellectual disability. (See Noll and Trent, 2004) The new moral educational techniques held great hope as a treatment and even a cure for intellectual disability; in any case, the person was protected from abuse by society. However, by the end of the nineteenth century, disappointment in the failure of moral treatment to cure intellectual disability and new discoveries based on the science of the period changed the rationale for their isolation and treatment. Instead of protecting the intellectually disabled from society it became necessary to protect society from them. II. THE RISE OF SOCIAL DARWINISM AND EUGENICS Darwin's theories of biological evolution and survival of the fittest were widely disseminated in the latter part of the nineteenth century. (Stern, 2015) In 1883 Sir Francis Galton in England took the concepts of biological evolution and survival of the fittest and applied them to the human race. On the basis of Darwinism applied to humans, that is, Social Darwinism, he proposed to improve the genetic quality of human populations by eliminating genetic groups judged to be inferior and increasing genetic groups judged to be superior. He coined the term Eugenics to name this new science of controlled human breeding. Social Darwinists thought that the "unfit," of human society were paupers, criminals, the insane, prostitutes, and those with intellectual disability. Curiously, Galton deemed English aristocracy as the most superior. (Haller, 1963) Several advancements in science seemed to support the need for eugenics. Rediscovered in 1900, principles of heredity based on Mendel’s study of peas were used to show that undesirable traits in humans passed from one generation to the next in permanent, irrevocable genetic design, a claim that was substantiated by Henry Goddard’s The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble- Mindedness, 1912, and The Hill Folk; Report On a Rural Community of Hereditary Defectives by Danielson and Davenport, (1912) In 1906, a test for measuring intelligence developed by Theodore Simon and Alfred Binet in France was brought to the United States in 1912 by Henry Goddard. He arranged for its translation into English and used it at the New Jersey Training School for Feebleminded Boys and Girls at Vineland, New Jersey. (Ayres, 1911) The 1916 Simon-Binet test was quickly accepted by many as a "real" measure of an individual's inborn mental capability. Experimental testing of special groups, such as immigrants, paupers, criminals, prostitutes and the insane and those with intellectual disability as well as army recruits during the First World War led to the revelation that there were far more people with below “normal" intelligence than previously suspected, with a much higher proportion of them among society's "unfit" than in the general population. In the scientific community and the press, the relationship between cause and effect was soon established: the “unfit” were so because of their inferior intelligence. (Gregory, 2004). A. The Menace of the Feebleminded 4 These newfound theories were the impetus for a wave of alarm to sweep the country. The press and the public expressed fear that the quality of the genetic pool of the United States was being lowered by the indiscriminate “allowing of foreign elements to immigrate to our shores -- immigrants who did not represent the average type of mental ability even in their own countries” (Inskeep, 1926). The reproduction rate of the “moron” group -- paupers, immigrants, criminals, and so on was believed to be far greater than the reproduction rate of the middle and upper classes, and it was feared that they would eventually far outnumber the others (Popenoe, 1938). “Unchecked feeblemindedness,” the root of social evils, would soon become the burden of civilization. These views were popularized by a publicity campaign of the National Committee on Provision for the Feebleminded in 1916, during a period later called "The Alarmist Stage." (Doll, 1928) In 1912, when people from many parts of the world were entering the United States in great numbers, Henry Goddard sent a team of specialists